Briefcase

MS intoduced briefcase for quick and easy file synchronising for people who're busy. A good thing indeed, but could have been better.

Take for instance, my situation: I work on the same project, using both my Lab machine and home machine, both are PCs. The project has about 100MB data and 700 different files, where I would edit a few of the files in a given day. Copying the whole thing is just annoying: Although in my case I use a thumb drive to move my files around, it takes a lot of time to copy; thumb drives are really bad at copying a lot of small files than copying a single big giant of a file. Since the directory structure is quite complex, 77 folders to be exact, I can't keep track on what's being modified: So I thought of giving Briefcase a try.

To my shock, I realised that briefcase is actually meant for the people who actually use briefcases: wear ties and tuxedos too, perhaps. A one or two Office ducuments, a couple of pictures: you can't actually sync two computers effectively unless you connect them with a cable. The options available are:

• Keep copies of files in both your PC and laptop, and connect them with a cable to sync.


• Keep a removable drive (floppy in MS knowledge base article) and edit them there, while you're working on the laptop, go home and sync.

Obviously option one is not available for me, and how about option two? It may be possible to keep one or two files in a floppy, and even there editing can be a real pain. Think of 100 text files being generated and deleted dynamically, programs compiled, 200 times a day: on the HDD, it takes a second: on a thumb drive, faster it may be than a floppy, it would take ages. So I have to copy the files on to my lab machine.

One guy pointed out (not from MS officially) that you can make a copy of the briefcase to the lab machine manually. However, this practically solves only 50% of the problem because there's no way of updating the briefcase from that copy: you just have to copy it back to thumb drive, which is copying 100 MB and 700 files for changing 10 files that are less than 100 KB each.

Well, I might not be a typical businessman, but this is not WinXP home edition either: or does Windows have a better XP version other than XP Professional for researchers? And briefcase has been there for quite a time now: I don't think it'd improve later. What I ask for is not rocket science; just a way to sync files between two folders just by moving only the files that are modified.

Right now, I've resolved to use good ol' XCOPY, one of the best utilities MS had since the age of DOS. it allows you to selectively copy files depending on archive attribute or modified date. Four batch files to move things from and to thumb drive from two machines, and it's done.

Does anyone know a better way :-/ ?